


half of one

by marginaliana



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Pregnancy, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 01:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21153359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: Donna keeps the pinstriped suit in the back of the closet, and she only puts it on when she has something to say.





	half of one

**Author's Note:**

> Was digging through my unfinished/abandoned fic files today and stumbled on this one (from 2010). Not sure why I gave up on it since it was almost done, so I went ahead and tidied it up and here you go.

Donna keeps the pinstriped suit in the back of the closet, in a box that's labeled "woman things" because she knows Shaun will never dare to look there. The irony of it hasn't escaped her.

Sometimes she thinks about hanging it up, because having it folded up makes square creases in the fabric, and the tie always smells a bit musty. But instead she just leaves it there, only reaching for the box on the rare nights when she needs it, when she's maneuvered Shaun out for the evening with his mates and she knows she won't be disturbed.

Tonight she knows she's going to put it on, can feel the twitchiness of need building up under her skin. She's been feeling ill the past few days, nauseous and exhausted, and Shaun has been casting her anxious glances all afternoon, looking like he wants to wrap her up in cotton wool. It's one of the things she loves about him, but right now it's bloody smothering. Finally after dinner Donna loses her patience, and swats him on the arm just as he's blithering something about maybe not wanting to go to the pub after all.

"Oi, you, out," she says. "Go be a hooligan for a few hours and let me have a bit of me time already."

"But, Donna—"

"Don't you 'But, Donna' me," she says, but at the worried look on his face she softens. "I'll be fine. I can take care of myself, you know."

"I know," Shaun says. "There's one of us wears the trousers in this family and it sure isn't me."

"Yeah, it's Grandad," Donna says, and Shaun laughs.

"Yeah," he says. "That's who it is." Then he kisses her on the cheek and says, "All right, love, I'm going then. I'll have my mobile if you need me."

Once he's gone Donna watches fifteen minutes of _Big Brother_ and then shuts the telly off and goes into the bedroom. She pulls out the box and unfolds the suit, then strips down to her underwear and puts it on, piece by piece – shirt, trousers, vest, tie. She smooths her fingers over the silk of the tie, feeling it slip against her hands, then tucks it behind the vest and does up the buttons. The jacket comes last, and she moves in front of the mirror before putting it on slowly, because this is the moment when something changes – when _Donna_ changes.

It feels like she's putting on a new face, too, a new body. The sensation is heady; she can taste the air around her now, feel it thick on her skin. She stands differently – feet further apart, shoulders back. Confident. The jacket is a weight on her shoulders. It feels like power and responsibility; it feels familiar, like coming home when she'd been half-wanting to stay away forever.

She doesn't look like a man when she wears the suit – she's got too much up top to ever pull that off – but she feels like she's half of one, somehow, herself but someone else.

When Donna thinks about it, lying awake in the night and listening to Shaun's calm, even breaths, she imagines it ought to be more about sex. After all it's secretive, it feels good to do it. And isn't sex what it's all about, all this bollocks with clothing fetishes and thinking you're half a man? She's never really known anyone who did that sort of thing, but that's what it's like in those documentaries they show on Sky Plus. 

But when Donna wears the suit she doesn't want to have sex, doesn't even think about sex, really. Instead what she wants to do is talk.

She looks up, meets her own eyes in the mirror.

"Hello."

The reflection doesn't move (of course it doesn't – it's just a reflection) but he's there, the man who is her.

_Hello, Donna._

She'd asked her doctor once whether the head trauma that had caused her amnesia could also cause changes in personality. He'd said yes, and it had almost been a relief, but then he'd followed it by saying words like "depression" and "irritability" and "anger," rather than things like "sudden, undeniable urge to wear a pinstriped suit" and "carrying on a conversation with yourself like you're two proper people." Donna had smiled and nodded and promised she'd tell him if she experienced any unusual symptoms.

(Doctors make Donna nervous. There's no reason why they should – not a one she can remember has ever been less than professional. But whenever she hears a voice say "Doctor" there's a little jump in her chest, a tightness that she thinks must be fear.)

"It's been a while," she says, almost apologetically, but even as she says it she's shaking her head.

_You've been having a brilliant life. That's the important thing._

Donna smiles. "I have, yeah." If this were anyone else she'd try to make small talk, but it seems silly to dither when she's talking to herself, more or less.

The buttons of the suit jacket are stretched tight over the faintly-rounded curve of her stomach, and Donna's hand rests there for a moment before she looks down and then up again. Some of the bravado leaves her.

"We're having a baby," she tells her reflection.

_I noticed._

"No sass," Donna says automatically, then laughs. "Well, I suppose I'm entitled to sass myself."

Her reflection says nothing, but it's laughing.

"It's—" She stops.

_It's my baby._

"Yes." That's what she'd meant to say, only she hadn't quite figured out how to say it. It's _her_ baby, and Shaun's, of course, because she's not a slag, but it's his, too, this other half of her. Donna knows that, just the same way she knows he'll be ginger, and a proper genius, and that he'll be a little boy and not a little girl. She just knows.

Part of her brain is already imagining baby's first pinstriped suit.

And the thought of the suit makes her brave again, makes it possible to say out loud all the things she turns over in her head twenty times a day. "He's going to be smart," she tells her reflection. "Smarter than me and Shaun, maybe smarter than both of us combined. And Shaun's a good man, and I'm all right, but I don't know if I can be a mother!"

Her reflection tuts at her, in a rather silly way.

_'Course you can._ She wants to give herself a hug; it's an odd sensation.

"But what if I turn out like my mum?" It's a horrible thing to say, Donna feels, but here with the hard, cool button of the jacket digging into her palm, she can't be less than honest.

_You won't. You wouldn't want to be, and that's enough. Have a little faith in yourself._

It's easy to believe that here, now, when she's wearing her superpower suit and she feels like she could take on the whole bloody universe. It might even be easy tomorrow, when she's back in her lady clothes and Shaun is smiling at her like she hung the moon. But a month from now, two months?

_I'll be here to remind you, if you need me._

Which is true – it's been two years since the accident and whatever weird brain thingie is prompting her occasional cross-dressing urges, it doesn't appear to be going away. At this point she's not sure she wants it to go away.

"All right," Donna says, "but the first time he starts spouting whatchamajiggy maths at me out the side of his crib I'll be calling you up. Oh, lord, I do sound ridiculous, don't I?"

Her reflection is laughing again, and maybe that's all she needed. That laughter – maybe that's all. 

She runs her hands over the suit again, feeling the wool scratch against her palms, the crisp edge of the hem. "You'll be here," she says. This one isn't a question. "You'll always be here." 

Her reflection almost seems to nod, and then after that it's over and Donna's alone in her body again, just a weird lady wearing a suit and looking at herself in the mirror like some sort of freak. She unbuttons the jacket, then hesitates before shrugging it off. She looks pretty good like this – not her usual style at all, but good. 

It'll look better on her little boy, though. It'll look like he was born for it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] half of one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011396) by [muggle95](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95)


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